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Blues star Johnny Winter dies at 70

Bluesman Johnny Winter, who played with Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, has died at the age of 70.

He died yesterday (July 16) in Zurich, only weeks before his new album, Step Back, is to be released.

The strikingly Albino Winter was born in Mississippi but raised in Texas and recorded more than 20 albums, received seven Grammy nominations, and was voted the 63rd best guitarist ever by Rolling Stone magazine.

His friend John Lennon wrote Rock and Roll People in his honour, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards also wrote a song for him in 1973 called Silver Train.

Winter was the brother of fellow musician Edgar of The Edgar Winter Group and was still performing around 200 concerts a year at the time of his death.

He struggled with heroin addiction in the early 1970s and he is reported to have much of the Nineties with a reliance on antidepressants, vodka and methadone.